'Good' will always be subjective and depends entirely on your needs and desires. You can get pre amps by ART, M-Audio, or Presonus for very little and they will give a stronger signal going into your Audigy 4.

To record guitar or bass, the pre will have to have a Direct In, or 'DI'. If you have a 2 channel mic pre with direct ins then you can simultaneously record voice in 1 channel through the microphone input and guitar/bass through the other channel using the DI.

As a general rule, you will get a 'better' mic pre by spending more money. :wink:

NineStar wrote: ... but want to know if a mic preamp can also be used as a guitar preamp?

with a DI box designed for guitar ... yes

the basic issue is that although you have some gain with a Mic-pre, the Mic is typically loaded with a low impedance and the typical guitar needs a VERY high impedance ( 1meg ohm and perhaps more ).

The DI box makes this impedance change for you and sometime can add a liitle gain.
Some Mic-pres have the added instrument input ... ( a built-in DI box )

A top flight DI box won't set you back too much and will probably serve you a lifetime.
It is also a very cool idea to have a couple of different types of DI boxes.

I never quite believe in going into the microphone inputs on these lower-cost sound cards. They just aren't good. If you are going to do a fair amount of direct in recording from guitars and basses, I might recommend those POD products. They are wonderful emulators and sound great and you won't lose your lease in your apartment! For microphone inputs many of the sub $500 preamplifiers will do you well, better than the Audigy any day. For a good low-cost microphone you still cannot beat a Shure SM58. In the studio, in the past, when we've run out of Neumann U87s, we've found that the SM58 is a good match. After all, many of Michael Jackson's vocals were recorded with a Shure SM7, which is nothing much more than a glorified SM58.

Thanks for all the advise guys.. much appreciated!